Since I am a contributor of other free and open software like KiCad, it's great to have a 3D design tool like FreeCAD. It is for free and there is a great community that can give support to you, with a lot of tutorials in Youtube. I use KiCadStepUp tool to import a KiCad PCB easily and be able to see the entire design with it's electronic part, which includes every electronic component. I have experienced some bugs with elementary features as well, making modeling even simple parts very tiringĬomments: I usually work with non-very complicated designs and I am used to created them from the typical 2D sketches, but I can highlight some features I like and the ones that helped me more: it is possible to import an STL file (a mesh) and convert it to a solid, which you can work with later (very useful if you want to modify any design found on the Internet) there are many plugins that help to improve FreeCAD, i.e. It is really complex to use, very little user friendly and the documentation is most of the time not that helpful. The possibility of having a parametric CAD together with FEM analysis are great. However, depsite the difficulties in 3D modeling, the FEM part is more straightforward to use and allows to obtain interesting results.įreeCAD, as the name suggests, is free and considering alternatives on the market available for free right now, this is the only CAD with so many functionalities, which I consider another great advantage. However, if some of the issues will not be solved and another more user friendly alternative will be present on the market, I feel like it will be abandoned quickly. Right now, I feel it is one of the most valid alternatives, especially after Fusion 360 introduced limitations on the numbe of components that can be worked with for free. The biggest pro of this software is the number of features implemented and totally free, which makes it the best unrestrained free option for who requires a CAD or a FEM software but cannot pay for it, but unlike another 3D software, Blender, that despite being open source got highly user friendly, FreeCAD feels still quite hard to use, due to a not so agile workflow and some bugs that are still to be fixed. There are not dedicated instructions for Windows yet, however, it is very similar to creating a portable version of FreeCAD on a USB medium.ĭetailed instructions can be found on GitHub.Comments: I have used FreeCAD as an hobbyist who has no availability for payed cad softwares, to produce models that I later 3D print. Instead of using the command line, you can also create a dedicated desktop icon. ![]() This is essentially a portable FreeCAD version. When starting FreeCAD like this for the first time, you have a new default configuration. $ HOME="$PWD" FREECAD_USER_HOME="$PWD" FreeCAD_0.19.AppImage $ mkdir modernUI # new directory that contains Modern UI Uninstalling Modern UI is then simply accomplished by deleting the directory. To easily test Modern UI without interfering with your standard configuration, you can contain it in a separate directory. Running Modern UI in a self-contained directory If you do not feel confident about this, consider to not install. Note: To uninstall, you have to create a macro and execute it. Installing more workbenches after installing ModernUI may cause problems.The workbench is primarily tested with English and may exhibit unexpected behavior in other languages.If you experience unexpected behavior, always first try to uninstall and then reinstall the ModernUI workbench.Source code on github: Source code Modern-UI.Panels such as Combo View are collapsed/expanded upon mouse-over.Activating a workbench's ribbon tab shows groups of the workbench's tools.Modern UI ribbon tab replaces the top-level menu.The ModernUI Workbench is an external workbench that replaces the standard user interface. 4.1 Running Modern UI in a self-contained directory.
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